Please Help With My Fish Tank Community Question

Hello again!

Let's get the cycling bit done with, then we'll be asking questions about water hardness before we talk fish community. i.e. Platies need hard water, Rams need soft water.... but this won't matter as the sharks will eat them anyway!!!

Don't worry, we've all been there and you're in the very best place for help and advice.

You certainly have a wide spectrum of fish species there Jack. As Colin has pointed out there are already some obvious conflicts... Silver sharks are more of a specialty fish which can only be kept with similarly sized/active/aggressive species. depending on the dimensions of your tank you might find others won;t be happy in your tank. Most plecs need wide a tank of 100cm minimum, usually 120 or 150cm on average.

I myself have a 180litre Aqua One tank which is 80cm wide so I have a Bristlenose plec. You might consider this as an alternative.

i know my tank is 100cm wide by 50cm length  by 40cm wide with a 1000 litre per hour filter

Hello Jack.

I would suggest spending some time on the community creator. Not only is it actually quite good a good way to while away the time whilst a tank cycles, but it is also very informative. I've spent way too much time on it, especially after going to an aquatics centre and seeing fish that I really like, only to discover on the CC that they are not suitable for the water in this area (darn you hard water), but also to see the huge range of fish that are suitable. This has lead to my purchasing way too many tanks to get even a fraction of the fish I like. 

Happy birthday harlies! 
 

I forgot to mention the filter in the 'introduction' thread.

With a name like that I assume it's an All Pond Solutions filter. Looking at APS website, I can't find a manual for the 1000 EF though there is one for the 1000 EF1 (here).
The descriptions of both filters say they should have ceramic rings, bio balls, activated carbon and fine filter foam. What is inside the filter now? Ceramic rings and bio balls are bio media, that is they are home to the filter bacteria. The bio balls are black ridged spheres; the ceramic rings are small white hollow cylinders. It's possible the previous owner may have changed them for something else. They should only be changed when they start to disintegrate.
The filter foam looks like white fluffy pads to by the photos on APS website. If that's what they are, they catch the fine particles to 'polish' the water. This stuff gets clogged easily so does need replacing. If you don't want to buy their own brand, you can get filter wool by the metre (Ebay, pond supply shops) and use a branded pad as a template to cut the sheet up.
Activated carbon is black pellets. You don't actually need to run carbon full time, but keep some in the cupboard as its main use is removing medication after treatment has finished. Again you don't need to buy APS carbon, any make will do. If the filter does have carbon, leave it there till the tank has settled, then think about swapping it for more ceramic rings or bio balls.



I've seen your water company stats on the other thread. The figure you want is "hardness german" at 5.9. This is actually quite soft and means that mollies and platies won't be happy, especially mollies. Your pH is just below 7, which platies and especially mollies won't like either. But everything else on your list will be fine with those figures.

When you look at fish profiles on sites like Seriously Fish and Fishbase, they use one of two units for hardness. One is degrees German (aka dH), the figure in your table; the other is ppm (or mg/l). 5.9 German deg = 105 ppm. So you need to look at fish that are happy in 6 german deg (dH)/105 ppm.

It depends how many fish were in the tank when the previous owner had it. Fish make ammonia as their version of urine. Bacteria grow in the filter, and on other surfaces, which use this ammonia as food. But there will only ever be the amount of bacteria that there is enough food for. So if the previous owner had 20 harlequin sized fish, there will be the right amount of bacteria to eat all the ammonia made by 20 harlequins, in which case you could get more fish straight away. If he had 40 harlequin sized fish, you could get even more fish. But if he had just 3 harlequin sized fish, you have too many fish at the moment for the amount of bacteria. But this does not mean you can never have more fish. These bacteria will multiply if there is more ammonia than the current number can eat, you just have to take it slowly and not get too many fish at one go. This is one reason for getting a test kit so you can monitor the levels of ammonia and nitrite whenever you get more fish to make sure the bacteria are coping.
The ammonia eating bacteria turn the ammonia into nitrite, and there is another type of bacteria which eat that and turn it into nitrate. Both ammonia and nitrite should never go above zero, but they will if you get a lot more fish than the bacteria can cope with.


The difference between hard and soft water is the amount of minerals dissolved in the water. Fish from soft water rivers and lakes have evolved to cope with few minerals; they have problems if they are put into water with a lot of minerals. And fish from hard water areas have evolved to cope with lots of minerals and they suffer in water that doesn't have enough minerals. Fish cope better and live longer, healthier lives if the tank water is similar to that in the river or lake they originated in.

So with a GH of 6 (5.9 is near enough 6) virtually all of the fish from South America would be fine, as would most fish from Asia. The fish that would have problems are those from Central America and the Rift Lakes in Africa (Lake Malawi and Tanganika mainly)
The fish on your first list - blue rams and emperor tetras are South American; harlequins and gouramis are Asian. But platies and mollies are Central American.
Look at the fish profiles in the menu at the top of the page. Virtually all the fish in the Tetra section with the word tetra in the name would be suitable from a water point of view, though some of them would need bigger tanks than yours.
Most of the fish in the Barb section would suit your water as would those in the Catfish and Loach sections.
The section to avoid is the livebearer section and some of the fish in the cichlid section (Central American and Rift Lake cichlids). But there are plenty of South American cichlids to chose from.
With softish water, you have a much bigger choice than those with hard water.



With so many fish to choose from, it is hard to draw up a list for you. You may not like the fish I like. The best way to go about it is to visit some local shops and see what they have that catches your eye BUT DON'T BUY ANYTHING. The first rule of fishkeeping is don't trust the shop. Too many of them will sell you the most unsuitable fish just to make a sale. Make notes, then research. Come here and tell us what you like the looks of and between us we can help you make a good selection. Between all the members on here we have experience of a lot of fish 

so these are the fish that me and my family like... but I don't want a bristle nose plec I want a green phantom
 and I couldn't find electric blue rams?
would these be okay in my water?

okay i think i have fixed my list but please be gentle as you tear it apart

and what fish shoal the best and are the tightest shoalers as i have one male harlequin to 5 females and the male keeps wondering off on his own